Elijah's flight at Jezebel's threats

Until now the prophet had stood before Jehovah (chaps. 17: 1;
18: 15) and had spoken in His name; but now, terrified by the
threats of Jezebel, he flees from the dangers of the place into
which his testimony had brought him. Just as we have seen in Moses
at Meribah, Elijah's faith* does not rise to the height of
Jehovah's grace and patience, who is full of goodness and mercy to
His people. It is this failure which puts an end to Elijah's
testimony, as it had shut Moses out of Canaan; for who can equal
Jehovah in goodness? Elijah does not look to God; he thinks of
himself, and takes flight; but God has His eye upon him. He who
had not God's strength amid the evil had no refuge but the
wilderness. There was a heart true to God, but not faith equal to
meet Satan's hostile power in the place of testimony to the
end. He must either be a witness for God amongst His rebellious
people, or be entirely apart from them.

God's care over His servant

The heart of Elijah and the hand of God led the prophet into
the wilderness, where, overwhelmed perhaps, yet precious in
Jehovah's sight, he will be alone with God. Elijah's forty days'
journey in the wilderness has only a partial resemblance to the
forty days which Moses spent with God, in the same Horeb to which
the prophet was going, or to those which Jesus spent in the
wilderness for conflict with the enemy of God and man. In the two
latter cases nature was set aside. Neither Moses nor the Lord ate
or drank. As for Elijah, the goodness of God sustains the weakness
of tried nature, makes manifest that He considers it with all
tenderness and thoughtfulness, and gives the strength needed for
such a journey. This should have touched him, and made him feel
what he ought to be in the midst of the people, since he had to do
with such a God. His heart was far from such a state. Impossible,
when we think of ourselves, to be witnesses to others of what God
is! Our poor hearts are too far from such a position.

Elijah at Horeb: his complaints

Elijah goes on till he reaches Horeb. But coming before God to
speak well of himself and ill of Israel is a very different thing
from forgetting self through the power of the Lord's presence, and
setting Him before the people in His power which is patient in
mercy in spite of all their evil.* People sometimes come before
God because they have forgotten Him in the place where they ought
to have stood and borne testimony for Him. And thus God asks
Elijah, "What doest thou here, Elijah? "Terrible question! like
those addressed to Adam, to Cain, and now to the world with
respect to Jesus. The answer does but betray (as is always the
case) the sad and fatal position of one who has forgotten God. The
voice was not a voice of thunder, but one that made Elijah feel it
was the voice which he had forgotten. Wind, fire, earthquake,
these heralds to man of the power of God, would have suited the
angry heart of Elijah as instruments of divine power against
Israel; but these manifestations of His power were not God
Himself. The still small voice reveals His presence to Elijah.
That which would have satisfied his will, and that which would
perhaps have been just towards others, did not awaken his own
conscience. But the still small voice by which God reveals
Himself penetrates Elijah's heart, and he hides his face before
the presence of Jehovah. Nevertheless the pride of his embittered
heart is not yet subdued. He repeats his complaints, unsuitable
as they were at the time when he had himself just destroyed all
the prophets of Baal, and proving that his faith had not been able
to find, by the light of his testimony, all that God saw of good
in Israel.

God's answer: the patience of His grace

God's answer, although just, is sorrowful to the
heart. Vengeance shall be executed, and Elijah is commissioned to
prepare its instruments -- a sad mission for the prophet, if he
loved the people. As to Elijah, he should be succeeded by Elisha
in his prophetic office. But if the deserved vengeance was to be
executed in his time, and if the saddened prophet was to announce
it, God has still seven thousand souls who had not bowed the knee
to Baal, although Elijah had not been able to discover them. Oh!
when will the heart of man, even in thought, rise to the height of
God's grace and patience? If Elijah had leant more upon God, he
would have known some of these seven thousand. He would at any
rate have known Him who knew them, and who raised up his testimony
to strengthen and comfort them. But the time was not ripe for the
fulfilment of God's purposes; and God will not give up the
patience of His grace towards His people to satisfy the prophet's
impatience. Elisha is anointed; but, Ahab having humbled himself
when God threatened him on account of his iniquity, the judgments
are withheld even during the life-time of Ahab and of his
son. This displays another feature in God's government, namely,
that judgment upon the evil-doer may not only have been pronounced
in the counsels of God, but may be already marked out in His
dealings, and be even ready to be executed a long time before it
is really poured out. The prophet, or the spiritual man, will
know or will understand in spirit that it is so, and will have to
wait for the moment that suits this perfect patience, which itself
waits upon the slowness of our hearts and the filling up of the
iniquity of the wicked, or at least for their refusal to
repent. [1] We see here how far the energy of the outward life of
faith may continue to exist, while the inward life grows weak. It
was at the moment of the most striking testimony to the presence
of God in the midst of the rebellious people, and when Elijah had
just caused all the prophets of Baal amongst them to be slain by
the people's own hands, that his faith entirely fails at a mere
threat from Jezebel. His life was not inwardly sustained by this
faith in proportion to the outward testimony. His testimony
excites the enemy in a way for which his personal faith was not
prepared. This is a solemn lesson. The still small voice (which,
unknown to him, was still heard among the people) had not perhaps
its due influence upon his own heart, where the fire and
manifestations had held too much place. Thus he did not know
himself the grace which was still in exercise towards the people;
he could not love them for the sake of the seven thousand faithful
ones as God loved them, nor hope as charity hopes. Alas! what are
we, even when so near God! And his complaint when he came to God,
for a person so blessed, has a sad deal of self in it. I have been
zealous, he says, and they have cast down Thine altars and killed
Thy prophets; just when he had cast down Baal's and killed all his
prophets; and then, I am left alone. It is a humbling
testimony.

[2] It was different too from Moses who, with God, interceded
for the people, setting himself aside.